


Cauldron Game Night (TopHat edition: Magic the Gathering)

by TopHat



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Cauldron Game Night, Contessa is the dumb, F/F, F/M, Magic The Gathering - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:55:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27009961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TopHat/pseuds/TopHat
Summary: Contessa SECRET HOBBY which you WON'T BELIEVE!
Relationships: Fortuna | Contessa/Kurt Wynn | Number Man | Harbinger, Rebecca Costa-Brown | Alexandria/Fortuna | Contessa
Comments: 1
Kudos: 29
Collections: play stupid games win stupid prizes





	Cauldron Game Night (TopHat edition: Magic the Gathering)

Kurt sighed. “How many counterspells are you holding right now, Contessa?”

“At least two,” she lied, clutching four Islands with lethal on board. It had been hard, learning how to do something other than tell the truth when not explicitly guided to lies by her power, but over the past few years she managed to put together a poker face that could trick the average fourth grader. She knew the precise age of the cut-off point because at the Friday Night Magic Kurt had managed to wrangle her into, the deceit gave Contessa her only victory that evening, earning the extremely-disappointing pity promo Tromokratis, almost more humiliating than receiving stone nothing.

After a breath of silence, Kurt tapped the lands he’d placed in front of his creatures, put down a single piece of card stock, and stated, “Damnation. Please bury your creatures.”

“We said no powers,” Contessa muttered, picking up her cards and moving them to one side. The Alexandria-Alt-Art Unesh she returned to her Command Zone. “Do you have a way to win in the next two turns?”

Kurt dropped his hand on the table. “I play my commander, cast Hatred and Assault Strobe, equip Lightning Greaves, and attack you for forty one commander damage.”

“Play a different deck,” Contessa said, shuffling her hand and remaining cards into her deck and glaring down at the hand-painted, smug face of a mass-murderer that still somehow had more merchandise than most Protectorate heroes. “I’m sick of having your boyfriend smack me in the face.”

Like any man with a Freudian ego less substantial than a New Year’s promise, Kurt quickly obeyed. He removed the offending engine of destruction from the table, replaced it with a red and white box labeled ‘Boros Lifegain,’ and asked, “Have you considered playing more interaction in your ninety nine? It will both increase your win rate and make you feel like less of a useless sack of flesh squeezed into formal wear.”

“If I wished to emasculate a hopelessly ignorant group of bigots by showing them how incompetent they were in public, I’d address Congress in a Groucho costume,” she replied, drawing seven cards and scanning them: five lands and two seven-mana creatures. An average hand, and keepable. “Instead I wish to distract myself from the impending apocalypse by playing a children’s card game. I keep.”

Kurt sighed, flipped his own box open, and began drawing cards. “Distraction therapy as a technique is less effective if you insist on discussing the event you wish to avoid.”

_ Rebecca is near _ .

When Contessa had been a young girl, she had eye-spied another young girl. This, in and of itself, was not terribly unusual, but the sensation of something fluttering in her chest was. After consulting the internet and the Kool Kids at a local high school, she concluded it was a crush and decided to take measures to ensure that she did not miss the chance to engage in such teenager tomfoolery while she was still nubile (a word the internet had insisted was an accurate way of describing her).

The Path to Ass, however, had come with some downsides. Specifically, after a black-out rave in Latvia, Contessa had found herself constantly aware of any and all beings she rated a 9 or higher within a several city-block radius around her. While acclimating to such a sense had taken a single step and wrecking vengeance upon the Trump-who-promised-not-to-involve-powers-during-play had been a mere two hundred and fifteen, removing the modification would’ve taken no fewer than four thousand, two hundred and fifty six.

In other words, after getting cranked so hard Bet’s economy almost recovered, Contessa had found herself with a hottie radar.

Possibilities flashed through Contessa’s mind. Nerd culture was still nerd culture, and having her hobbies exposed to the only actually-Kool Kid in Cauldron would lead to the loss of any and all cred she’d managed to scrape together with the single hottest woman in the conspiracy (up to and including the deviant with fetching eyes and green-glass irises). Her power told her that in the vast majority of possible futures it would be forgotten in a week, but with some prodding it allowed for a few outcomes where the reveal that she’d spent tens of thousands of dollars on collectibles would render her celibate for the rest of her life.

That could not be borne.

“Pack it up,” she said, in a tone which brooked no argument, slapping her deck back in its box and tossing it across the room.

“Why?” he asked, short, sharp movements stowing items with greater value per-gram than most gemstones.

Once the last remnants of her childhood were safely out of sight, she turned and looked Kurt dead in the eye. “I risk someone vital to the salvation of the human species discovering my hobby. If you want your teenage crush to keep breathing for longer than it takes to say the d-word, you will help me construct a plausible alibi and you will do so without complaint.”

It took bare seconds to get Kurt’s shirt off, and an adequate-pleasurable five minutes later the door popped open.

“Oh my fucking GOD, Contessa! We have sexual harassment meetings on that table!”

**Author's Note:**

> Face it Roon, Contessa is a nerd.


End file.
